In the latest round of a heated dispute between McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. and the owner of the distressed McGuire Apartments, a 25-story tower in Seattle, the St. Louis-based contractor maintains the concrete frame’s corroding post-tensioned slab system can be fixed for less than $2 million. McCarthy calls the local owner’s refusal to make “simple” repairs, its ejection of tenants and its proposed dismantling of the nine-year-old building “irresponsible acts.”
The owner, Carpenters Tower LLC, responded through a local adviser. “Nothing McCarthy has proposed will arrest the corrosion, which already has progressed inboard of the anchor wedges,” says Brian J. Urback, vice president of Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel LP.